Renovations E-Book

Kari Kilgore

• Herausgeber: Spiral Publishing, Ltd.
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Bob Henderson despises the modern world.
Talking elevators. Automated cars. Smart phones that track every move, mood, and thought.
The day his office building grows security cameras in the halls, Bob realizes the modern world might despise him right back.
What happens when the network decides to search for itself?

An excerpt from Renovations:
The office now had the most modern building maintenance unit available, one of the first to combine routine maintenance and wiring with computer and phone network monitoring. 
Light source defective? No problem, the building took care of it as soon as it happened. Need a room wired for an extra phone? Just have the building do it. Even better, this CBU was self-sensing for most things. 
No one even had to ask.
Bob had grown up with self-reliant buildings like everyone else, but he’d never liked the idea. He imagined tiny mechanical fingers in the ceilings replacing the lights, stealthy robots doing the cleaning at night, most of the activity invisible. All of it coordinated by the central unit lurking in the subbasement. 
Any technology with that much control would eventually mess something up.

Leseprobe

For my mother-in-law Karen Adams

Who embraced new technology,

especially for her studies of the past.

And who always maintained a healthy respect

for the tools she used.

Renovations

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Chapter 1

The eyes in the hall stopped Bob Henderson’s heart.

Nothing else in the endless expanse of corporate offices had changed. Same polite beige walls hung with officially approved, bland artwork. Same muddy brown carpet with an inoffensive swirling pattern. And all the same co-workers scurrying about, striving to do just enough to fit in without standing out.

In the sixteen years Bob had been doing his level best to scurry while appearing to stroll, not so much as a single landscape or wildlife painting had changed. Not without a survey, results study, and staff meeting first.

Yet at the intersection of every smaller hallway and open space, a silvery, globe-like eye sprouted from the ceiling. Bob’s arm hair tried to rise under his sleeves, made impossible by the black wool suit jacket he still had on from the latest corporate mucky muck meeting.

He forced air into his lungs, cringing away from his own sweat breaking through his heavy layers of deodorant and aftershave. He was certain he heard tiny cameras over the general office background noise, moving and focusing inside their concealing mirrored domes, recording every movement and sound.

No one noticed Bob frozen half out of the elevator. He didn’t notice himself until his heart lurched back into action with a painful jolt. By the time the elevator politely asked if he needed help, his work partner Tim was several paces down the hall.

The system’s voice sent Bob out like a shot.

Tim finally turned, forehead furrowed under his tidy blond corporate haircut.

“Bob, what’s wrong?”

“It’s not enough they have the computer controlling everything.” Bob hoped he kept his now thundering heart and laboring lungs to himself. “That blasted Central Building Unit. Lights, phones, the whole damned building. Now they have to put cameras in the halls? Who told the CBU to do this?”

Tim stared at the row of gleaming half globes.

“I’m sure they’re not cameras,” Tim said. “They look like mirrors. Remember a few weeks ago when Cheryl ran into Walt coming around the corner too fast? They just programmed mirrors for safety.”

“Without half a dozen survey emails?” Bob said, shaking his head. “If you believe that…”

Tim half-smiled in his folksy way that didn’t calm Bob for a second.

“Hey, you and Carol coming by tomorrow night?” Tim said. “Steve says it should be a heck of a game, good as last time.”

“Yeah, about that.” Bob hated the way his face turned red, but that didn’t change a thing. ”Carol’s not really around anymore.” They both stopped outside Tim’s office, and Bob knew word for word what Tim was going to say.

“You got into a another fight about the networks, didn’t you?”

“Just like always, buddy. Knew I could count on you to help make a bad thing worse.”

Tim stared at him for a second, not making a pretend nice face this time. Bob walked away before Tim could dispense words of wisdom. Somehow the one who’d been happily married since he was twenty-two years old felt qualified to give relationship advice to a forty-one year old newly single guy.

Bob counted three more of the mirrored globes along the hallway to his office. There was even one outside his door, hanging above his assistant’s desk. Laura herself was nowhere to be found, but no need to worry about that. The blasted CBU would be able to find her in a second with these brand new eyes it was growing.

Even with his irritation at Tim and his unease about whatever now decorated the hall, Bob couldn’t stop the excitement creeping around his grouchy edges. For the first time in months, nearly a year, one of his and Tim’s projects had received full funding. Tim got on his last nerve sometimes, but this time his insistence on doing too much preliminary research had paid off.

Bob just wanted to savor this for a while.